Why I Dance
by Your Angel of Music
Summary: A short piece of Jack/Ianto angst, set in the final moments of "Something Borrowed". As Ianto dances with Jack, he begins to wonder what he really means to the Captain. No real spoilers for that episode. Slash, but no explicit scenes...just implied.


This is a piece of Jack/Ianto angst that I wrote in an attempt to put thoughts and emotions to a moment shown on screen. It is set during the last few moments of the episode "Something Borrowed", when Ianto dances with Jack (l'squee!). It doesn't really give anything away in the episode, or in any other episodes, yet it does, at one point, contain a flashback to Episode 12 of Series 1, "Captain Jack Harkness".

It is in Ianto's POV all the way through, and may seem jumpy and disjointed at times. This is because I intended this piece to be a continuous stream of consciousness rather than a perfect, grammatical storyline.

Slash is, of course, more than implied, though if you are looking for hot Jack/Ianto bed scenes, then you will be disappointed. This author specialises in implications and feelings; she has not yet successfully written a heterosexual sex scene, and she does not wish to start off her career in smut with a gay scene, as that could raise a few problems. If gay relationships offend you, then do not read; Oh, and stop searching for Jack/Ianto fics…what do you expect them to be? Straight?

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN TORCHWOOD. IF I DID I WOULD BE AN INCREDIBLY LUCKY HUMAN BEING, AND THERE WOULD DEFINITELY BE MORE JACK/IANTO SCENES. I NEED MORE CLIPS FOR MY FANVIDS, AND I NEED MORE INSPIRATION FOR MY FICS. UNDERSTOOD, MR DAVIES?

Name: Why I Dance

Category: Torchwood

Chapters: 1

Rated: T (to be on the safe side)

Pairing: Jack/Ianto (Come on, who else?!)

Author: Your Angel of Music

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**Why I Dance**

Why do I dance?

Why do I continue with this tango that will only end in pain and heartbreak?

Why do I stand here, clinging to him like some sort of unwanted parasite?

I know he's not looking at me. His attention is focused elsewhere. All my attention is focused on the closeness of our bodies, trying to gain some sort of connection, some feeling from him that I mean something. But he stares over my shoulder, distracted, feet only just moving in time with the slow music and his eyes fixed on some point on the other side of the room. He holds me close against him, and yet it seems as though the chasm between us has never been larger.

I can never mean as much to him as he means to me. I want more than this physical connection. Perhaps that's as much as he needs to survive, but I need more than that. I can't survive on air alone. I need nourishment.

I don't know why it is that I stay. That I keep returning to him, keep giving him what he needs, keep giving myself hope only to have it knocked back roughly by the coldness.

But that's the thing. He's not always cold.

Sometimes he comforts me. Sometimes he holds me tight, and it feels as though everything that is wrong with the world is going to be fine. When he wraps his arms around me and presses me close, whispering my name, his accent twisting the vowels and giving the sound a uniqueness that I find nowhere else; that's when my world falls into place.

That's when life isn't complicated anymore.

That's when I feel that there is no one who can reach into my life and hurt me anymore.

And then it's gone. He flirts casually, switches on the smile, but there's nothing of the warmth. It hurts so much to feel so much promise, feel it flutter just beneath your fingertips, only to have it snatched away so cruelly from your grasp.

I have to blink and wake myself up. I have to make sly comments, cynical jokes, build up a defensive wall that nothing can get through. And sometimes it feels like I've succeeded in creating a barrier between myself and what I know can hurt me.

But when he looks at me, when he turns to me and smiles…a hard iron nail is driven forward, forming ripples and cracks in the concrete. And I know then it will not be long before the pressure builds up too high for the weakened dam to hold.

And then he looks at her. Then I know that I am just the fall back. If he had the choice, he would leave me in an instance. If he could have that one thing that he knows he cannot have, then I know, deep in my heart, he would feel no pain in never touching me again.

He doesn't understand. He's like a drug. I got myself into this, thinking it would come to nothing, but now I'm addicted. I can't not have him with me…if he leaves me I'll shrivel… sicken…decay…if he leaves me I might as well be dead.

If only I'd stopped before it got to this point. I should never have begun this in the first place.

I hated him once.

_"I'll let you suffer!" I spat at him, venom seeping through every fibre of my being. I wanted to scream it at him again and again, letting each word hit him like the bullets I longed to fire._

How time can change things. How the passing of minutes, seconds, hours, days and months can grip views and emotions, twist them cruelly in its grasp so that they are distorted and unrecognisable.

Once I wanted to scream words of hate. I wanted to push him away.

Now all I want to do is pull him closer. Now all I want to do is scream "why can't you see that I love you?".

I should let him go. I should turn him around, look him in the eyes, tell him that he should stop this charade. He should stop pretending. It's obvious that when he's with me he wishes he were with somebody else, that as he can't have her he will have me instead. Second choice.

I should hold his hand, let him go gently and with dignity. No more humiliation, no more lies, no more pretending that the parts we are acting are who we really are. I should tell him, I should encourage him to follow his dreams, to go with his heart, to be happy.

"Tell her. Go to her. Be with her."

But I won't do that. Because I'm too selfish. It's the very fact that he can't have her that keeps driving him into my arms, and I can't jeopardise that. I'm addicted, and addicts only want more of the substance that keeps them going.

I need him now.

Oh yes, I'll smile at him, flirt, respond to his suggestive words and looks, but that's not what I want. I want the one thing he can never fully give me. I want his heart.

But how long can this last?

He can never die. What happens in a few years time, when I have aged and he has not? What happens when I no longer fill the requirements of the person who helps him to forget? What happens when he brings in someone else to fulfil that role, and I must stand and watch history repeat itself? What happens when his need for me is exhausted, but my need for him continues, relentless and cruel?

I know my place. It was spelled out for me many months ago; words spoken in anger that now resonate so strongly in my mind.

And it was Owen who said it. Owen, who has never spoken to me but to criticise, to mock. Owen who, in that moment of fear and uncertainty, was more truthful than either Jack or I have ever been.

_"You're just a tea boy," he hissed, staring almost disbelievingly at the gun in my hand. My hand was shaking, but I didn't lower the weapon I was holding. Jack had told us never to open the Rift, and I was not going to disobey him now. Even it meant getting him back, I could not bear the contempt and betrayal that would be in his eyes every time he looked at me._

_"I'm much more than that," I insisted, my voice wavering. "Jack needs me." In that instance though, my words were not directed at Owen. I needed to reassure myself, give myself some sort purpose; my words were for my own benefit, my own needs and my own selfishness._

_"In you dreams, Ianto," Owen had grinned then, a grin that was simultaneously tired, tragic, and so, so cruel. "Except maybe the dreams when you're his part-time shag."_

I had denied it then, pushed the thoughts and truths of what he was saying out of my mind. I could not let them in. I refused to let them destroy me; he did not understand how long and hard I had worked to build myself back up after losing Lisa, and I was not prepared to destroy all that I had built.

_I am more than that. I am more than that. I must be more than that._

I am jolted back to reality as the DJ's voice echoes over the speaker system. The equipment crackles, and I can barely make out what he is saying. But that doesn't matter, because I am not listening anyway.

The bars of the song die, fade away softly, and another replaces it. This one is slower, each note resonating around the room. Suddenly I can feel his hand on the small of my back, pulling me slightly closer. I feel his head tilt slightly in my direction, and I glance to the side; finally, his attention is on me. He's looking at me…only me. My heart leaps slightly.

There are some moments, moments like these, when I feel that there is some affection there for me. Moments when there is a tenderness in his eyes, when his smile is soft and his words not needed. It is in the rare looks that are passed between us, the moments when he puts his hand softly on my shoulder and doesn't take it any further than that. The moments when it feels more than physical.

And then he looks at her, and I am confused once more. He must love her or me. How is it possible to love more than one person?

I answer that question by myself. It is possible…so very possible. I used to think that I could never love another person again; when Lisa died, I felt that if I gave my heart to someone else then the love I held for her would slowly be forced out of me. But it didn't. My hearts must have swollen to twice its size, because the love I felt for Lisa still takes up as much space in my heart as it did before, but now there is another love cosying up beside it.

And it is so very different to anything I have felt before, in its danger, in its intensity, in its fire.

It gives me pain. It breaks my heart. It makes me clench my fists together in agony, makes me close my eyes to avoid the furious tears, makes me seethe with an almost unbelievable jealousy.

And I know I would do anything to hold onto it.

I tighten my grip on his hand, leaning my head against his shoulder. I can smell him beside me, feel him against me and I have never felt happier. He is holding me close. In this moment there is just him and me. We are holding onto one another, and it feels so right.

Suddenly I know.

It is these moments. The times when he rests his hand on my shoulder, his touch like a butterfly's. The times when he cups my face in his hands and leans in ever so slowly. The times when his lips move against mine with a slow, tender movement rather than the hurried, desperate, needful kisses I am used to. The times when I can feel his skin against mine and there is no physical barrier, no mental barrier there between us. The times when I can feel his soft breath fluttering against the flesh of my neck. The times when I wake in the night, filled with fear and uncertainty, and his arm is slipped around my waist like a protective shield.

It is the times when I think: _He loves me. He loves me. _

Those moments that I live for.

Those precious moments that I would wait a thousand years for.

Those amazing, surreal, breath-taking moments that I would sell my own soul for.

And that is why I dance.

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Comments are, of course, greatly appreciated, especially people who have suggestions as to how I can improve on what I have already written. I hope that, in the long run, your criticisms and observations will help me to become a better writer. This is my first Jack/Ianto fic, and I intend for there to be more in the future…I hope you feel the same way. 


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